Israel destroys Palestinian children’s school

August 22 was to be the first day in a new school for Palestinian children who had previously had to walk a long distance to their old school, itself an overcrowded one in a converted car garage. But the night before opening day, as part of its ongoing US-supported efforts to make life hell for the Palestinians it rules over in its apartheid state, Israeli forces destroyed the children’s school so that when the children turned up, there was nothing there.

Israeli military jeeps came barreling down towards Jubbet al-Dhib’s first and only primary school late Tuesday night, terrifying locals who had been finishing preparations for the school’s grand opening set for the next morning. Soldiers shot tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets as they cleared the way for bulldozers and flatbed trucks brought in to take the school.
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How ExxonMobil Corporation misled the public about climate science

ExxonMobil is under threat of litigation by the attorneys general of several states that they “violated, variously, racketeering, consumer protection, or investor protection statutes through their communications regarding anthropogenic global warming (AGW)”, as stated by Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes in their paper Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014) that appeared in the August 23, 2017 issue of Environmental Research Letters (vol. 12 (2017) 084019). Supran and Oreskes show that the internal ExxonMobil documents and research supported and done by ExxonMobil largely supported the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change while their public stance was largely at odds with it.
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A story about dog loyalty for National Dog Day

Today is National Dog Day so I would like to share this story about how dogs can be extremely loyal and dutiful. I heard it on the radio program The World on Friday, August 25, 2017. It tells the story of two dogs of Lynn Landry, a sheep rancher in British Columbia, who was forced to evacuate due to raging forest fires.

Landry and her husband took their four border collies, but they had to leave behind their flock of 90 sheep and their Maremma sheepdogs, Tad and Sophie.

“There was nothing we could do,” says Landry. “We had to leave.”
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White nationalists and religion

Atheists are well aware that the religious texts are full of awful things that if anyone reads and takes seriously will discredit religion. But it seems that some white nationalists are interpreting the Bible in far more extreme terms than any secularist could possibly imagine, according to a new book Blood & Faith: Christianity in American White Nationalism by Damon T. Berry.
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Mobs rampage in support of Indian religious rapist

It is not just in America or in the Catholic church that we find religious people exploiting the trust people place in them and indulging in sexual abuse. This happens frequently among Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim religious figures as well, though not reported as widely here. Just today in India, supporters of a flamboyant Indian ‘holy man’ Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh went on a rampage after he was convicted of a 2002 rape. At least thirty people have been killed and over 250 injured.
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Signs that Trump is getting desperate

I have mentioned before that Donald Trump is like a dangerous animal that will lash out indiscriminately when cornered or frustrated and there are already signs that this is happening. There is no doubt that he is feeling increasingly frustrated that more than seven months have passed and there has been no advancement on any of his major promises, nor is the prognosis good for any of them in the future. There has been no progress on his signature issue of building a border wall. The idea that Mexico would pay for it was always utterly ridiculous and his pleading with the Mexican president to not keep saying publicly that they would not pay is a sign that he realizes that it is not going to happen. His promise to repeal Obamacare has gone nowhere and although he says that he will bring the issue back, it is still far from reality. The tax cuts he promised have not materialized either. His promise that he knew how to destroy ISIS and win the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria has so far not been borne out and in fact he is now even more firmly embedded in Afghanistam. So he is zero for four on his major promises.
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